The Brothel was one of many businesses that shared space underground after Havre's big 1904 fire.

Havre Beneath the Streets

Havre, Montana

Havre was a rowdy frontier city at the turn of the 20th century, full of hard-drinking men and easily combustible wooden buildings. In January 1904 several of those drunken men set fire to one of those wooden buildings -- supposedly a saloon that had kicked them out -- and the flames spread. Within a few hours most of downtown Havre was a smoldering ruin.

Town bootlegger "Shorty" Young has his gun and spittoon handy.

Havre's citizens, however, did not abandon it.

The city rebuilt itself in nonflammable brick while its businesses -- respectable and illicit -- stayed open in a tunnel-connected network of underground rooms. It was a unique subsurface mall where the public could eat ice cream and get stoned on opium.

Fresh loaves sit in the wall oven of the Gourley Brothers Bakery.

The less-savory parts of this sunless realm lingered into the 1930s, according to Christy Owens, office manager of the Havre Beneath the Streets tour. Then the entire complex was abandoned and ignored.

Wicker caskets on display at the undertakers.

"It was one of those things where people didn't talk about it, because they figured you knew about it," said Christy. "You know, 'We have a Walmart so why should I tell you we have a Walmart?'" By the 1990s, however, Havre's underground began to be seen as a collective cellar of civic pride: a symbol of the city's pluck and we're-all-in-this-together spirit. The empty shops, both decent and indecent, were cleaned out, fixed up, and rebuilt as a tourist attraction. Jack Van Colton, a local artist, took some old store mannequins and transformed them into Havre's subterranean clientele.

Havre Beneath the Streets takes modern visitors through this oddly communal underground world. The hour-long guided tour winds its way past 18 different displays. Scorch marks from the fire are still visible on the walls; shafts of light enter through glass blocks set into the city sidewalks.

Rotgut booze, poker paraphernalia in the Sporting Eagle Saloon.

There's an ice cream shop and a barbershop; plastic sausages hang from an overhead rack in the meat market. The office of Dr. Wright has an x-ray machine, dental chair, and what must have been an extremely unhygienic examination table.

Headless mannequins in flimsy attire inhabit the dimly-lit brothel. The madam's room has mirrors and a chandelier, while the rest of the staff worked in an open space with a half-dozen iron-framed beds and zero privacy. Over in the opium den, addicts lie on bunk beds lit in lurid green.

The Wah Sing Laundry recalls the Chinese population who worked on the railroad and lived in the Underground, which for them doubled as place of refuge. "It wasn't safe for them to be above ground at night," said Christy.

A shaft of sunlight illuminates Havre's den of sin.

The pharmacy is well-stocked with a bottles of early 20th century drugs, many just as bad as those in the opium den. The blacksmith shop has giant bellows and dangerous belt-driven machinery. Plastic loaves sit in the wall oven of the Gourley Brothers Bakery, while wicker caskets are displayed at the funeral parlor as a church lady mannequin plays an organ for a funeral. A tack shop features saddles sold by "Long George" Francis, the town horse and cattle thief.

Like the other businesses in the Underground, the Sporting Eagle Saloon -- a notorious Havre dive -- simply moved into its basement after the fire roared through town. There's a table strewn with poker chips and half-empty bottles of hooch; a moonshine still sits out in a passageway. The bar is just a board set across two upright whiskey barrels.

$11.00 - the last sale at the 1916 Havre Hotel.

A mannequin of Christopher "Shorty" Young, the town bootlegger and brothel-owner, sits at his desk tabulating his profits, a shotgun at arm's reach and fake smoke curling from the end of his cigar. Christy said that one question asked by visitors, contemplating all of the fumes produced in the Underground, is, "How did people breathe down here?"

Christy said that although parts of the Underground were shifty, the tour is tolerant of, and open about, the choices that people made to survive in tough times. "I kind of scratch my head about the whole thing sometimes," said Christy, considering the range of human behavior on display in Havre Beneath the Streets. "It's a real combination, you bet."

[Photos provided by Montana Mark/Mark Driessen]